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Food Fights in School Lunch

More than 30 million students eat subsidized or free lunch every day in the United States.

Are taxpayers getting what they pay for: a well-nourished group of avid learners? Or, as some groups and nutritionists charge, are they loading up children with excess calories and extra pounds as well as fattening the coffers of the nation’s junk food purveyors?

The School Food Lunch program was originally launched as a way to bolster the health of the nation’s soldiers, not students as would be expected. Confessore writes:

“In one sense, the school-lunch program was all too successful. No longer was the military having trouble finding well-fed young American men and women. By 2009, according to the Department of Defense, more recruits were being turned away for obesity than for any other medical reason. The recruits, as a letter signed by dozens of retired generals and admirals put it, were “too fat to fight.”

Enter Michelle Obama. Her campaign to reform those recipes and requirements provided by the schools has met unexpected opposition by the “lunch ladies” AKA School Nutrition Association and their lobbyists.

Read Confessore’s compelling account of how politics and special interests are sabotaging our children’s best interests. It appears that the warm bodies of our “lunch ladies” with big smiles and dowdy hairnets have been snatched by well-pensioned government bureaucrats in the thrall of big business.